Why Is Everyone Misunderstanding Digger (2026)? [Podcast]

Stephen Fingleton walked into a cinema in Dublin knowing nothing about Digger except that it was marketed as a Tom Cruise movie with a wink. He walked out calling it one of the great cinematic experiences of his life. This week, he joins Danny to explain why.

We get into the film’s hidden architecture: a story that seems brash and simple until it quietly reveals its layers, a Kubrick-style production design that rewards repeat viewings, and a scapegoat plot that asks who we’re really blaming when the world falls apart. We also talk about the film’s uncomfortable portrait of audiences, why it may have been impossible to market, and why a $100 million campaign still couldn’t sell it.

Along the way, Stephen and Danny trade theories about hidden symbols, the influence of Brazil, the film’s sharp take on satire, and whether the critics were ever really watching the same movie. And if you’re wondering whether Digger is really dead, you’ll have to listen to find out what Stephen thinks.

Full Transcript: Kinolime Podcast Episode 60:

Participants:

• Danny Murray - Creative Executive, Kinolime

• Stephen Fingleton - Director, The Waif (Kinolime Production), The Survivalist (2015), Driver (2009)

Danny: Hey Stephen, thanks for joining us. What do you think about this film?

Stephen: Thanks for having me. I've seen it three times now. Last night I was at the premiere in Dublin, and I've got my little Digger tag. I'm a lucky bastard, I know. I need one of those.

Danny: Ha! Oh, you're a lucky bastard. I need one of those.

Stephen: I'm going to make sure I have it with me when I meet Mr. Cruise. Maybe I'll get it autographed, or I'll just flaunt it as a sign of great taste.

Why Stephen Almost Skipped It

Stephen: I had no interest in the film at first. It was essentially marketed as "Did you like Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder? Imagine a full movie of that." It's a bit like Dr. Strangelove. But I was curious. There was something mysterious about it, and I wanted to know what the story was. So I went in completely cold, without knowing it had a significant turn.

I saw it in a great cinema in Dublin with a fairly quiet audience, and I had an amazing experience when it revealed what it really was. It's one of the great moments I've had in cinema. I want to say that again. It's one of the great moments.

I compare it to the moment in The Winter's Tale when the statue moves. It only ever works once. The memory of that moment stays with you. But when you see it again, you start to see how it works. There are a lot of layers. On the surface it's a simplistic and brash film for a portion of its runtime, before it reveals some of its complexity. It keeps that tone, but it hides so much underneath.

I went to see it in IMAX, which was a six-hour round trip for me. Well worth it. Then I went again to my local cinema, where there was me, the person I was seeing, and two of her friends. The third time, I enjoyed it even more. That's very unusual for me, because I tend to get bored once I can read the meanings. But this is very, very complex. It's an incredible film, and I didn't see it coming. I'm stunned it got me. In fact, I wonder if it was some sort of poison pill to stop the Paramount deal. It's not a crazy idea.

Reactions and Online Backlash

Danny: Pretty much everyone I've talked to about this movie has had a strong reaction. There's a tailwind right now, similar to Megalopolis, in the way people talk about it. Everyone hates it at first, and then a week after the dust settles, there's a very strong cohort who love it dearly.

On the Paramount side, the one motif I kept hearing over and over was that Warner's last film is the story of incredible, boundary-pushing art that is now controlled by one guy. It's a last stand with a last movie star, and it's being controlled by the only person who could ever really criticize himself.

The Paramount Parallel and the Mountain Diorama

Stephen: There's a diorama in the film of a mountain that reminds me strongly of the Paramount summit. It isn't the same, but it evokes it. The Paramount summit is a real place. The one in the film is a composite. The film mirrors it on many levels.

There's a great line in it: "human-made theater production." It's a strange phrase to hear right now. Whatever type of art it is, human-made art is going to become a subtype of artistic production. I'm not going into the very big developments of the past two weeks, but in visual terms, there's extremely creative work being made by people who aren't really the ones prompting. There are very interesting music videos being made with a high level of skill.

So the concept of human-made art being something exceptional is raised in the film. It's fitting that the film itself has become a box office disaster. You'd probably have to go back to Heaven's Gate to find a comparable loss. And it's not just the film. They spent around $100 million on the promotion, and that money is going straight to media buyers. They promoted it as hard as they could, but the campaign is kamikaze. It can't tell people what they're going to see. It only shows one layer of the Matryoshka doll, which is incredibly disciplined, and they still haven't broken through. I thought they might bring out a different angle, but they haven't. All they've done is put terrible reviews into their ads and say, "Ignore them, decide for yourself." I think that's because the marketing team believes they might get fired, given the takeover.

Story, Passivity and the Audience

Danny: Did you leave the film with any thoughts about what it's saying about the nature of story itself?

Stephen: It's all about story, the whole time, and it's interconnected with the passivity of being a member of the audience. Even from the very first scene, where he's haranguing the deputy safety guy in Greenland, who's warning that there's going to be a catastrophe, he says, "It's your decision." That idea is repeated again and again throughout the film.

The other thing that's repeated is story used as a way not just of manipulating reality, but of manipulating what people do or don't do.

There's a scene where Dr. Ganesh is offered a piece of salmon but doesn't want to eat it. Digger asks him, "Is this delicious?" Ganesh says, "Yeah, I try not to eat it, because the reserves are all falling." Digger says, "Yeah, I try not to," which just means you have it sometimes. Then he tells him a story about where the fish has come from, which gives him permission to eat it. That comes up again and again throughout the whole film.

The story presented in the trailers is extremely rich, even though it appears to be extremely stupid for many reasons. When you go back, it's like watching a great piece of theater. It has a lot of dialectical depth, which invites you to come back and see more, even though its exterior is something like Trump. In fact, Trump is directly evoked. At one point, Digger refers to "the gangster government" and "the president." That's a very common description of the Trump presidency.

Danny: When I first watched it, I felt it was a direct refutation of story and the power of movies. It's fascinating to have someone like Tom Cruise as your star, with such a clear disdain for the idea that movies can change the world. If anything, it felt like it was telling you what you're saying about the tuna scene. Just by participating, you are culpable in some way.

Stephen: That raises an incredible question: was this a blunder to make, or was there somebody else who wanted this film made? It reminds me of Stanley Kubrick's late period, Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, and Vanilla Sky, which is a relevant film here. Eyes Wide Shut is full of occult symbols. There's a pronounced close-up of two eagles tearing apart a spore. It's almost a joke about hidden symbols. The story that unfurls on screen has a hidden hand, and the question it raises is why this was made.

The obvious answer might be that it's promoting action on climate change. But it's more mysterious than that. It's being marketed as Warner's last film, and it's almost designed as a bookend to their very eccentric run. I believe it's the final film, and I'm fairly sure it was greenlit by Mike De Luca.

They were effectively fired within two days. It was announced they wouldn't be part of the Skydance team.

Danny: It seems like they're probably going to move over to Netflix. Apparently they had really strong relationships that formed when the merger looked like it might not just be a three-billion-dollar cash flow to Netflix before Paramount swooped in. We'll see. But it's pretty devastating. They're not going to get the same level of theatrical release.

Tech, Surveillance and Lopsided Development

Stephen: Transitioning from fossil fuels to tech wealth is a theme in the film. The film doesn't give anything away. When I saw it again, I was looking at the graffiti on the walls at the end. It was quite faint but well done. You could see it said "tech" and "dictatorship," with "except for tech" added. There are numerous things in the film about surveillance and how ubiquitous it is.

One interesting thing is that it's set in an environment where things are somewhat dilapidated, but the tech is really good. The screens are great. Everything's great, which is a fascinating and unusual kind of lopsided economic development. It might be what the future looks like.

Danny: Something I've noticed is that in your own films, you largely avoid front-facing tech as much as possible. Did anything stick with you from that?

Stephen: We go to the cinema to get away from our phones. This is critical: Digger is constantly being interrupted by phone calls. At one point the entire film stops at a critical juncture at the climax. I'd say it's the real climax, because a very important subplot emerges when he answers a phone call. It's constantly intrusive.

That perhaps speaks to why the film is hated, really hated, by critics. It doesn't just say these things are annoying. It annoys you with them. It makes you very, very uncomfortable. It's almost an avant-garde thing it does. It uses uncomfortable elements, like very long scenes and jokes that aren't particularly funny, as a means of challenging the audience. There are some very funny jokes, though. The coffee machine gag is superb.

Danny: The coffee machine gag is great. I also loved the initial meeting in the war room about what's happening in Greenland. There are a couple of great Dr. Strangelove-style boys' club moments that I really appreciated.

Stephen: Did you notice that almost all of the film is shot from a low angle? I didn't realize why until somebody said after the screening that they committed to it. It has an amazing effect on a massive screen, because it makes the characters look like giants.

The text often runs quite separately from the visuals. The visuals are actually quite distracting in a way. You have to listen to the words and what they're saying. That's the thing I always love about Ganesh: "You always tell the truth." Whatever that means. The whole thing is so manipulative.

I was also looking at the way he manipulates people. His safety guy is so interesting. He needs him angry. He needs him on edge. He needs to push him over. That's why he does the tuning gag. He doesn't need to say it outright. One of the things I liked is how it shows elites. It's really accurate, even though it's a massive, crude kind of corruption. They're absolute experts at human manipulation. At one point he says, "Panic is very useful. When the house is burning down, nobody worries if someone's left the toaster on." It's the opposite of what most people would assume about human behavior.

There are real insights in the way it depicts these things, and it's fascinating. I think it will reward more viewings. One of the challenges with Strangelove is that Kubrick would make a film with very simple text and an incredibly ornate backdrop, with particularly detailed production design you could unravel for decades. This film has excellent production and a lot of depth, but there's a level where the depth starts to stop getting deeper. I think we know why that is. We can't talk about revealing what the film really is.

It almost functions as a parody of Kubrick. Not a parody of Strangelove specifically, but of what he would do: multiple encodings to get through what the film is about. All the while, it's talking about the futility of story. There's an idea in it that there's the art you can make in a basement and sell tickets for a fiver, and then there's the art you can make when Warner's cuts you a check for $180 million. What compromises come with that? The film shows the negotiation on screen on multiple levels. On the level of the director and the star, how do we go about doing this? And how a story that's 90 or 95 percent true can be incredibly damaging because of what it covers up.

Satire, Influences and Don't Look Up

Danny: Is there a specific sequence that captivated you more than anything else on your first watch? I've seen it only once, but my friends and the four other people in the cinema had audible gasps.

Stephen: The tree fall moment was really stunning for me. There are also a lot of interesting characters. Jesse Plemons's character is incredibly interesting, and it's the best I've ever seen him. He has a great look. The first time you watch it, he's the nicest guy in the world. You feel sorry for him, actually, with the terrible background he's been through. But he becomes the center of attention the more you watch it. He's the successor elite in a lot of ways. It's a cleverly written part, because the first time you watch it you see one thing, and the second time it's very different. You see this guy with tremendous expertise in human behavior, who appears to be bumbling, a fool. It's a wonderful part.

Danny: Before we keep going, I'd love to flag a competition we're running right now.

Meara: Our NXT 2026 Fall National High School Short Screenplay Scholarship competition is open to student screenwriters and runs until November 15th. It's a short screenplay competition, 5 to 15 pages, not a feature. The winning screenwriter receives $7,500 in grants and scholarship funds, and winners help get grants too. They'll write it, get a teacher to sign off on it, and submit a PDF by the deadline. Not a student yourself? If you know a teacher who's always championing their student writers, send this their way. Keen Align exists for one reason, and that's not just to talk about movies like we're doing today. It's to get movies actually made. Maybe this is your way in. Go to keenalign.com/competition/NXT to submit and learn more. Alright, thanks for listening. Let's get back to the episode.

Stephen: Just to explain, when I saw it with an actor at the Dublin premiere, I assumed they were as wrapped up in it as I was. It left them stone cold. They were something like six out of ten, and I couldn't believe it. So many people have had that experience, and I'd really like to know why. I'm not sure whether it was intended by the team. Did they want it to split the audience down the middle because they enjoyed the polarity? Or is there something about it where some people tune in and others don't?

For me, given the director, it's not a big surprise. It's about the nature of art. Of course I'm in there immediately. Maybe that's not the same for our audiences. Birdman was a comedy about show business, which is its own media genre, so audiences accepted stars being ridiculous. Whereas this is very, very focused on the audience. It's almost intensely focused on getting them to reflect.

At one point there's almost an audience surrogate, when he's presenting to the Parliament of Europe. They're presented as a square, frothing NPC crowd, and their dialect is completely unintelligible. People are shouting, and it's not even a real language. They've done this kind of morphed language. Their reaction is almost a reaction to Cruise's performance as Digger. The better he gets, the more they love him, even though what he's saying is crude and terrible. That's what's most interesting.

There's an idea that he's going to tell the truth, and what you think is that there are two things. One is a reckoning with the lies he's told, and he's going to confess. The second is that he's going to have a plan to fix this. The trailer sells that. But it's not really about that. It's about the making of a scapegoat. He's explicitly compared to Christ at numerous points, to the point that it's almost distracting. There's a reason for that. In some senses it's an imperfection in the film, but it's not really an imperfection. The film is accurately carrying out its depiction of its narrative layer.

He very frequently makes a cruciform shape. When I watched it the third time, he makes one as he's standing on the bars of the oil rig. They don't show it in full frame, but if you look at his arm movements, that's what he's making. The idea is that we can demonize the rich, the elites, and the industrialists. But what they're doing is acting as the sin-eater. They're taking our sins, and by falling, or by passing through fire in parts of the film, it becomes renewal. It becomes change. And it allows us to escape accountability for our own sins.

It's very, very misanthropic.

Danny: It is, and that's the least we can say. A friend said something to me after watching it that's a criticism. It's a disaster movie that isn't trying to save the world. It's trying to spin the narrative. It's bleak, in the sense that there's no hope of stopping this. Without spoiling anything, it's all about capturing the narrative. It's largely about humanity's relationship to carbon and capital, and in some senses it's saying, "Well, that's that." I found it brilliant that the iceberg was the United States' fault and it went to Europe. To me, that's enough. It's finger-pointing. You're blaming the emitters, and the societies largely doing everything to destroy the planet. Then they point at Digger and say, "It's not me, it's him." And he looks around and points at someone else.

Stephen: One of my favorite gags is that the next iceberg is called Kimberly, and Digger says, "No, it is not New America. It is criminal." Then the next thing is the name they've called it.

But yes, it's a scathing depiction of Europe. It's very negative, even on the smart European characters we begin to get to know as the production goes along. It's very critical of them. On the surface, a lot of people misinterpreted it as an anti-American film. I don't think it's anti-American at all. It's a depiction of how Americans are perceived, in the most cartoonish fashion. It's like if Michael Moore in 2005 had been given $25 million to make a farce. That's what he would make.

There's a scene where the president has his preacher by his side. He puts his hands on him, and everybody in the room places their hands on him to bless him. The preacher begins speaking in tongues, except it's just made-up syllables. It's as broad as it gets. There are others too. There's a scene where Dr. Ganesh is interviewed and you've got the right-wing, racist general asking, "Where are you from? No, where are you really from?" It's such an old gag, and it's played out in a way that obscures what was actually happening.

If you did a straight version of the Digger story, it would be fascinating. It would probably be something like Fail Safe, the black-and-white film released around the time of Dr. Strangelove, where Henry Fonda plays the president.

Danny: Never say it.

Stephen: It's a wonderful film. It's in real time. It was remade as a TV special, but it's very dry. It's the straight version of Dr. Strangelove. There's an accounting of events in Fail Safe that would be identical to what happens here, but it's very dry and very heavy, like a Michael Crichton-style thing. In fact, this is almost like a Michael Crichton narrative, but it's done in an extremely aggressive, one-note style, even though the text has hidden richness the writers put in. You can come back to it again and again.

This is why I think it's a bit like Trump. Trump is a character of himself, in ways that are almost impossible to imitate. You can imitate him, but you're just doing the same thing. He's self-imitating. Yet he has been tremendously accomplished at achieving many of his goals beneath the surface. Our inability to escape that surface layer and see what's going on underneath often traps us. We get stuck at the self-congratulatory level of saying, "These people are fools," and we don't get to the deeper part. I think it's a very brave thing to try to show on screen, without telling. I don't even think they tell the audience directly. You have to work it out over time. There are discussions, of course, but they're not as direct as they might be. And they're very late. By the time they come, people have already been on board or not.

Danny: There's something incredible about the very last scene before the end credits, which I won't spoil, when the audience is on screen and in real life filtering out.

Stephen: Oh, it's the change in the soundtrack.

Danny: It's the change in the soundtrack, but there's also something fascinating about the permission structures around satire, and satires that are really searing. I've heard a lot of people talk about this film's relationship to Don't Look Up, and how in some ways it's almost a diss track.

Stephen: It is. It's a diss track to Don't Look Up. I think Adam McKay is a fantastic filmmaker, and I still like Don't Look Up as a film. But it presented one perspective on American society, where you get idiots on one side and smart people on the other. It's kind of like Sorkin with jokes. You know what I mean?

Danny: Sorkin specifically. He's a guy who I think convinced high society, the Jon Stewart-loving elites, that you can defeat fascism with wit. You can defeat it through some sort of cultural negotiation around satire.

Stephen: I knew the critics would hear it, because it's an anti-critic film, even though it never slags them off. Birdman is explicitly an anti-critic film. The critic is the villain of Birdman. Nobody quite notices, but it's true.

Anytime you take away the signposts that say, "By the way, this is where we're going," and you add another layer of self-observation, you get into a feedback loop about what the critics were meant to do. First, the way the film is structured means critics can't talk about it, can't write about it. So instead, they write about one layer of the film, and they attack that. Their criticisms have already been anticipated by the filmmakers as the intended effect. All you can say is, "Well, I don't like what they've done," and they're not saying that they're not in control of their material.

I saw an interview where he says, "It's not perfect. It's got flaws." First of all, he's wrong. It is perfect. The fact that he can see the flaws, when us mere mortals can't, is telling. I've seen it several times, now three. It has a sensational mastery of tone.

There's one layer where it's more open. The closer you get to reality within the film, maybe the more you can critique certain things. But there's so much going on. The stuff that's really impressive is the Digger world, where everything has been turned up to eleven all the time.

For example, if you watch the trailer, you think he's going to shoot you, and Ganesh is screaming and all of that. When you see the film, you understand why the actor is doing that. The anger they have, which is his Digger character, is a scarecrow. A sacrificial lamb for us, the audience, whom we hoist up and mock. It says all of that on screen, and it's terribly clever in the way it does it.

One more thing that's important: there's a homecoming scene for Cruise's character at the end. I'm very moved by it. I cried the first time I saw it, and I don't cry at a lot of films. It's not even a particularly moving scene, but it's the combination of things. The suspended subplot has been resolved.

Positive Role Models and Film Culture

Stephen: To give a concrete example of how film is pressured: you're pushed to put in certain themes and make certain casting choices to reflect a particular view of the world. My least favorite is the lack of positive male role models, which is a frequent trope in modern pictures. When I say role model, I mean a masculine character who doesn't behave badly toward people and uses their strength responsibly. That used to be almost the entirety of protagonists until the 1970s. Even then they were complex, but they always had that side. Now it's quite different.

They had a huge crew on this film. Hundreds of people in the art department alone. When you watch the trailer, you have no idea why. The sets look like the cheapest, fakest sets I've ever seen. Where are they even working? And then you see the artistry. It's very complex. He's also aware that what he's making isn't going to make a difference in that sense. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. I can't think of any art form where the artist says, "This doesn't make any difference." It's almost as if art is for the sake of aesthetics only.

By the way, my favorite painting is Las Meninas in the Prado in Spain, by Velázquez. When you see it for the first time, it's like a mirror into another world. Everyone is framed at the exact distance from where you're meant to watch it. It's an incredible composition with endless iterations. When I was watching this film for the third time, I noticed it has something very similar. There's an amazing shot where Digger passes two aligned mirrors that create a hall of mirrors, surrounded by thorns. I don't know what the thorns are about. I'll find out. I still don't know what the alligators on the roof of Digger's apartment are about, or why there's swamp music at the start and at the end. There's a lot to figure out, and it's making some very interesting points.

As a piece of art for art's sake, it has its own value, and I think it's making the case for that. It's not making the case for the artist as polemicist. In fact, it almost argues that the artist's polemic isn't going to work. It's an anti-polemic disguised as a polemical liberal comedy.

Who's the audience for this? Probably people like me, you, and whoever else was in the cinema. There were five of us. It's crazy. It's very avant-garde, even though it's easy to watch. It's extremely avant-garde and transgressive in what it's doing.

Box Office Failure and Marketing

Danny: You touched on it a bit, but do you have a hypothesis for why it bombed so spectacularly? I understand it being divisive, and I understand it being impossible to market. But there was just a lack of people turning out for what is a pretty incredible package. I think it made just over a million dollars at the US box office in its opening weekend. Why didn't people even go?

Stephen: I rarely manage to nab tickets for the Irish Film and Television Academy screenings, so I was surprised I got in. Even at the filmmaking level, it's a very difficult question. I think there are a few reasons.

First, the film is impossible to market. You can either ruin the film in the trailer, and it still won't work, or you can market one subsection of what it's about, which is what they've done. And it looks off. There's something wrong with the film, so you're forced to push a few gimmicks. They knew this was a problem, because a lot of the shots in the trailer aren't in the film. I'm sure there were cuts. I think they deliberately filmed lots of marketing material to create a mysterious tone, and they didn't really use it. The only marketing angle they came up with was: "Are you sufficiently invested in Tom Cruise to see a mystery film where he repeats his Tropic Thunder antics? Don't worry, it'll be classy. We've got a big director."

It's impossible to market, and it goes to show. The funny thing is, a lot of people are saying it's too big-budget, but it wouldn't make any difference. If they'd made it for much less, if you'd made this for five million, it would have made fifty bucks. The only reason it's made any money is because of the marketing, and they've poured a truckload into it.

It's astonishing. It was greenlit, presumably with Cruise taking his full fee as well. You get the full Cruise marketing machine, so it's not free. He pushes it hard. But that's one marketing problem. The other is that there's probably an editing problem.

There might be an audience for those things. But if you realize what it is, it's an extremely bleak film. The way the story resolves isn't a happy ending, in that sense, and I'm very happy about that. One thing you're expecting is the moment where Cruise cries. It completely messes with your expectations. It has an almost-cry in the first act, and then they never do it. It's fantastic, because the film itself is being marketed as Oscar bait, when they must have known it's a very anti-Academy film. He still has a chance of winning, in my opinion. I think it will find fans, and if he can get a certain plurality, he can get through, and he deserves it. I don't need to see anything else this season. What he's doing is so particular and so complicated. It's not without its false notes, particularly the behind-the-mask moments. That's probably where he's most vulnerable.

Another thing: I think there's an implication that masks are at play in this world. The film doesn't go into it. There's that cutaway.

Danny: The cutaway is funny. In the same scene, without trying to spoil it, we see masks. There are so many overt references in the production design. Right behind the mask in that cutaway is a Cassavetes opening night poster.

Stephen: There's a poster for Opening Night in the film, which is important. It's not a particular spoiler, but the tree fall moment, I think, is a direct reference to Brazil.

Danny: Are you talking about the ending of Brazil?

Stephen: The ending of Brazil, yes. It shows the critics' lack of literacy. They don't realize how significant Brazil is as an influence on this film. The real influence of Brazil is its tone. It's quite a funny film about incredibly horrible things. It's about dictatorship, the failure of revolutionary politics, and modern dystopia, the nightmare of bureaucracy and the inability to escape. But it's done in such a way that you can watch it. It holds its punch until the end, right until the end, and then it hits.

I've heard people say it's like a Wes Anderson film. I genuinely think a number of people haven't even seen it, because they're basing their reviews on the critical consensus. They're almost reviewing the trailer. When I've told people to ignore the trailer, because it's deceptive, someone said to me, "I don't want to watch a cat getting tortured." It's not a cat. It's not a cat.

Okay, so I'm giving away some of it. I love everything about the film, including the marketing. When it's bombed, it's bombed, and the studio must have okayed the marketing, presumably acting in good faith. It's a backdoor Oscar campaign. All they need is a significant minority of the Academy to recognize it, and they're going to go full force at that. Nothing they can do will change the box office. They're going to work hard on the awards side.

Who was going to see that? There are going to be loads of people who haven't seen it, because they don't know what it is. And I'm making it sound like a slog.

Danny: It's not a slog. It's incredible. It's an iceberg being moved quickly through the sea by wind.

Stephen: Yes, and it's really, really well written. I'll give you a small detail, even though it's the third time around. Sandra Hüller is the German actress in it. Some people are slagging off her part, but it's a great part, like all the parts of the film. Goodman's part is great. Res's part is great. The actress's part is great. There's the guy with the thin mustache.

Danny: The guy next to Res.

Stephen: Yes, he's a friend of an actor, and they're all suggesting keywords to ban, to control the narrative. And he goes, "I'll go." It just gets in there. It's well done.

Sandra Hüller's character, in the Digger world, is very positive. She's the Cassandra trying to make renewables work. When I first watched it, I thought the renewables play must have played out, and that's where the wealth for succeeding generations would come from. But when you watch it again, I think it's pretty clear: no, renewables aren't working in this world.

Danny: Her sister was a tax write-off. She was always well... and she's probably still there. If anything, she's probably still working for the company now.

Digger's Fate and the Epstein Parallel

Stephen: My take, and this isn't really a spoiler, is that Digger has faked his death. In real life, and in the story or whatever. That would be my guess: you set somebody up to take all this hate, and then they disappear. Like the Epstein story, for example. I'm not suggesting Epstein faked anything. But on a serious level, Epstein was a kind of sin-eater for an entire class, in reverse in some ways, because his influence has been seen so much since.

The focus on Epstein is clearly a tremendous distraction from a huge amount of genuine ills by men and women in very senior positions. And it's hard to think about, a bit like Digger. If this is what they're showing us about this guy, and what he was doing with all his peers, what are they hiding? When you think about the context of Digger, there's something similar. The characters are so monstrous that they're showing us them, and the question is, "What are they really like behind the scenes?" The closest you get to a hint of that is Jesse Plemons's character, who is only ever seen behind the scenes.

Digger says, "You shouldn't even be here." And he's such a fascinating figure. There's a hurricane in the story, a very important hurricane. I know the imagery the art department used for the hurricanes, and it's quite distinctive. There's even a world in which Plemons's character had some agency over the hurricane.

Danny: So the idea is that a technology company is now controlling the weather?

Stephen: In my opinion, there's a weather-control implication in it. If you really want to play it out, one of the implications is what happens in Greenland and what happens in Russia. The Russia part is important, because the icebergs are implied to be a natural disaster. What if they weren't?

We don't know what the story we're watching really is, or what the truth of it is. What we do know is that people like Digger want us to see it. That applies to the film as well. The filmmakers have put clues in the picture about what they really think, in ways you will never read in the trades. There are a lot of little things that I find very impressive. For me, this is art that people at the very top of society can enjoy, and people like you and I, somewhere in the lower to middle rungs, can enjoy it too.

If they deign to direct the huge finances from Warner Bros., Skydance, or whatever it is now toward making something like this, hell yes, I'm going to rush to the cinema as many times as I can before they pull it. Because it will be played in private screening rooms again and again.

Danny: It will. Even as I think about it, there are moments where pretty much every character comes in, and our central story device, they just drop bombs all over. I'm sure this is maybe just conspiracy brain, but they are quite literally in a box, in an office, in a box, dropping bombs.

Stephen: Yes.

Danny: I'm sure that's just me prying for anything. But it's a film you can think about forever. It's incredible.

Stephen: They've spent a lot of time designing a kind of maze to work through, some of which I don't think was ever intended to be understood. But just as an experience, at least see it once and try to go in clean. The people who admire the film keep its secrets close to their chest, because they want to preserve those moments for an audience that can see it.

Danny: I hope I didn't spoil too much with my interjections about how much I love this.

Stephen: My hope is that people stop the video and go see it. Even on home viewing, I think this will play. It's an amazing experience in the cinema. It doesn't come across as cinematic in the trailer, but its relationship to the screen is what makes it work.

Danny: It's an incredible film. Whoever is watching this, I'm sure you haven't seen it yet. By the time this comes out, it's probably not showing anymore, and if we make it snappy and post it in a day or two, it's probably still not going to be in theaters.

Stephen: It's going to be gone. But you know what they say: Digger die.

Danny: Dig or die. Dig or die. Please. Yeah, please.

Stephen: Bang, bang, bang.

Closing Thoughts

Danny: Is there a major release this decade that you've enjoyed as much as this movie?

Stephen: No.

Danny: Same. It's incredible.

Stephen: The intellectual nature of the team behind Digger, beforehand, obviously, as well, is years ahead. The Odyssey was a visceral experience. This is a very intellectual work, which doesn't mind if you think it's stupid, because it knows it's smarter than you. It flaunts that the whole time. It's almost Brechtian theater, Hegelian dialectics, all of that. But it's also more South American in a sense, in the relationship of power, which is somewhat different from Europe. You have elites writing about elites in South America in a more complicated way.

But no, it's terrific.

Danny: It's the best. If you haven't seen it, please go see it, and then see it a couple more times. It's just so wonderful. Stephen, thank you so much for joining. It's great to try to be the first layer of this.

Stephen: Good to talk to somebody else who's enthusiastic about it.